Good Vibrations for life

The evening is gray and dull, it drizzles. My day was long, I can feel that as I finally sit in the car on my way home. I turn on the radio. "Hey Jude," Paul McCartney sings. And suddenly everything is different: I'm 14 again, have long hair that resonate in time, I'm enterprising and curious about the world. The longer the ballad penetrates my ears and brain, the looser my shoulders become. My head feels free, everyday life falls away from me. The play that should comfort Julian Lennon after his parents' divorce is also good for me. A seven-minute makeover, a song only, but my tiredness is gone.

"Hey Jude" is high on my personal hit list. Not unchallenged at the top, but already on one of the higher places. The Beatles evoke memories in me: of youthful hunger for life and resistance to parental tutelage, of hard-won freedom and first adventurous encounters with the adult world, of almost infinite power and energy.

Music is home

Music that evokes positive memories always works well? No matter if beat or blues, hits, classical music, jazz or folk songs, Professor David Aldridge of the University of Witten / Herdecke has determined. In his international research project "My Top Ten", he asks people about the most important pieces of music in their lives and the stories that are associated with them. It is already clear that music that has inspired us at a young age does not let us go our whole life. It is and will remain our musical home, with its sounds we feel at home and comfortable.

But also music that is heard together with others sounds a long time in our memory and awakens this memory to new life after the first few bars. Strong feelings included. So many get in the football songs of the last World Cup still soft knee. Or we get into ecstatic ecstasy with a Rolling Stones hit like the live concert. Not to mention the couples who melt away longingly even after the silver wedding, when their introductory song sounds on the radio. "Darling, they are playing our tune" phenomenon, musicologists call this emotional chain reaction that activates nerve cells in the frontal brain, such as during sex and after a good meal. And since this part of the brain is closely linked to our limbic system, which controls hormones, unconscious reactions and emotions, the following applies: the deeper the feelings, the stronger the signals and the more of the happiness hormone dopamine releases the body's reward system. "Music and rhythm," Plato already knew, "find their way to the most secret places of the soul.

The heart beats higher, in the throat sits a lump, a chill runs over the back as if by the push of a button, the eyes become moist. Music enchanted. "Dream a little dream of me", also one of my very private top hits. Memories of a warm June day in the country, a lavish feast, opened with a wedded wedding dance instead of the obligatory waltz, contrary to all conventions. Pure luck. The Mamas & The Papas still go under my skin today, years later.

The heart beats faster, in the throat sits a lump, the eyes become moist.

Maurice Ravel's "Bolero", Igor Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" and Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony are considered classic goose bumps. But: "Emotionally, only intimate pieces connected with one's own biography can stir up," says Dr. Oliver Grewe. At the University of Music and Drama in Hanover, he studied the goose bump effect of music together with Professor Eckart Altenmüller. His conclusion: "There is no such thing as a perfect chill piece - everyone has to find out for themselves which songs have a feel-good effect." Or vice versa rather depressed and spoiled the mood.

Music is memory

"Memory-free" music such as Far Eastern meditation pieces, gong or panpipe sounds can be wonderfully relaxing. Strong emotions and the lump in her throat, however, does not elicit. Therefore, it does not really do us any good until it has become more familiar to us through repeated listening and with pleasant feelings. But sounds with the right reminder frequency not only cause our eardrums to oscillate physically as sound waves, but also strike in our memory the corresponding string that touches our soul.

The more varied a melody, the more areas in the brain it appeals to. In the primary hearing center alone, the first processing station in the head, 100 million nerve cells process the electrical impulses that arise in the inner ear, in the 3500 hair cells of the snail, from the fluctuations in air pressure.And every single piece of sound information leaves "traces of memory" in our brain, as Professor Manfred Spitzer, brain researcher at the University of Ulm, calls them. You shape and change it, over and over again, for a lifetime? and not just a part of it, but, as new studies have shown, the organ as a whole. "There is no music center," says Spitzer. "The whole brain makes music." No wonder that our whole body becomes a sounding board.

Rhythm is therefore not only in the ear, but also in the legs and in the stomach. He rocks his foot unconsciously, drumming his fingers on the table, or, if he is agile enough, skyrocketing the production of sex hormones. Music has long been proven by numerous investigations, more than balm for the soul. Music is medicine, a therapeutic with holistic healing power in every age.

Whether Beatles songs, folk song or Bach's St. Matthew Passion? faster, strongly accented rhythms, predominantly in major keys, harmonious, but often with dissonance, are a wonderfully activating and stimulating tonic that affects the sympathetic nervous system, accelerates breathing and heart rate, increases blood pressure, relieves stress and boosts the immune system. But who, as music psychologists say, hears ergotrophic music in excess or in too high a volume, risks unpleasant side effects such as tension and aggression when its own "pain threshold" is exceeded.

Music is medicine

In contrast, a piece of music at a slow tempo, below the heartbeat rate of 60 to 70 beats per minute, can be calming and relaxing. Blood pressure, muscle tension, and the level of stress hormone levels fall, and the body releases more pain-relieving endorphins. Fears and pain fade away. Dentists now use the music effect as well as maternity clinics. Music, as studies have shown, relieves many diseases? from depression and anxiety disorders to burnout symptoms, to psychosomatic complaints and tinnitus. It makes intestinal reflections more bearable, stroke patients faster to move again, and dementia patients respond better to sounds than to words.

Music is the inner sand beach.

In anthroposophic medicine, music therapy has long had its place to compensate for disabling disbalances in the body. In addition, conventional medicine is supplementing and preventing sounds and vibrations. "Music can not cure on its own, but it can be healing without limit," says Professor Hans-Helmut Decker-Voigt, director of the Institute for Music Therapy at the University of Music and Performing Arts Hamburg. But inserting a "therapy CD" is usually not enough. Standardized sound mixtures for certain indications have only limited success. There is no such thing as a safe composition for pain or hypertension for all patients. Mozart does not always have the same effect. Music is something very personal, intimate. Professional music therapy therefore always goes in search of the individual traces of memory marked by melodies, dynamics, sounds and rhythms. "Every illness is a musical problem," wrote Novalis. However, the remedy for suffering sounds different with each of us. And even if we want to drown out moods and everyday rumors in the body, each of us intuitively picks something else out of his CD collection.

Janis Joplin or Vivaldi, "Me and Bobby McGee" or the "Spring" from the "Four Seasons", powerful strength that has worn me through a number of bad days, or happy-light-weighted lightness that makes the sun shine in the evening? often not an easy decision. But I just have to listen to myself. At least at the first sound, I know if I made the right choice, if my musical home remedy gives me what I need right now.

The more often we consciously enjoy music as a ritual, the more beneficial it will be.

"Music can never be a tablet," says Hans-Helmut Decker-Voigt. "Every now and then we have to wonder curiously what would be good for us at that very moment, just so we can go to our inner sandy beach." It must be flexible and diversified, our musical medicine chest, individually arranged and always open for new discoveries. Depending on mood and complaints, we can then select this, sometimes that piece, and develop ourselves further in the search for well-being, but also musically beyond the sounds laden with youthful reminiscences. And instead of being showered casually, we should be mindful and all ears. Breakfast radio and department store endless canned food are rather acoustic annoyance than soothing sounds. However, the more space we give to selected music in our lives, the more often we consciously enjoy it as a ritual, the better it can develop its Good Vibrations, and the more wholesome it will be.

Music is the elixir of life

However, it is even more effective to make music yourself or to elicit sounds from one's own vocal chords. One in ten Germans has already discovered the healing, mood-enhancing power of music.Gospel and church choirs, guitar ensembles, wind orchestras and drum groups are in great demand. Music connects, gives security and contacts to like-minded people. Singing and making music together with others is fun, relaxed and also increases your ability to concentrate and your ability to think. Children who play an instrument or regularly sing a song are smarter than singers and unharmed peers. And adults also shape and train their brains.

Music has a vitalizing effect. The best example of this is "The Rooms". Although the 40 members of the English retiree band, average age 78 years and named after a walker, no longer all have teeth in their mouths, they stormed the charts with their version of the rock classic "My Generation" by The Who. This not only benefits a British old-age charity, which will benefit the proceeds, the freshly baked stars have given their musical commitment visibly new momentum.

Music is the elixir of life and the mood maker. "With music we can, cleverly, create our own emotions," says Dr. Oliver Grewe. The body then responds. A fantastic opportunity to do good in everyday life. So only courage: who? also outside the bathtub? more often times a song is choking from the bottom of my throat or singing along with his favorite song increases the "chill effect" immensely.

Therapy according to grades

For example, music therapy is used as adjunct therapy in patients with pain, heart disease or anxiety disorders. As an artistic psychotherapeutic method, she works with two different methods: In the receptive version, the therapist plays sounds, sounds or pieces of music to the patient. In the active method, the patient himself improvises on special instruments that allow a spontaneous expression, and the therapist musically responds to it. Unconscious feelings and conflicts come to light through music, which are then processed in conversations. Possible is both a single and a group therapy. Whether the health insurance company is involved in the costs of treatments that take place outside a clinic in private practice (depending on the duration 50 to 120 euros), is not yet regulated. Individual funds, however, make exceptions. In addition, music and adult education centers, adult education centers and free therapists also offer workshops on "music therapy self-awareness", which always have to be paid for themselves. More information: German Society for Music Therapy e.V., Libauer Str. 17, 10245 Berlin, Tel. 030/29 49 24 93, www.musiktherapie.de. Addresses of therapists: Professional Association of Music Therapists in Germany e.V. (BVM), PO Box 11 46, 86951 Schongau, Tel. 088 61/24 07 25.